The other Montana laws that reach your association.
Montana has no homeowners’ association act, so its HOA law arrives as single sections scattered across the code — a sign statute in the property chapter, an entry rule fifteen chapters away, two meeting rules inside the corporations code. These are the ones that matter, and the things people wrongly assume Montana has.
The four acts hosted in full on this tab do most of the work, but several of Montana’s most practical HOA rules are single sections sitting on their own. Because these are scattered provisions we don’t reproduce in full, this page summarises them and cites the section so you can read it at the source.
A person, homeowners’ association, property owners’ association, corporation or other private entity may not, as a condition of property ownership within the jurisdiction of the private entity or by any other means, prohibit a sign advocating the election, appointment or defeat of a candidate for public office or the passage or defeat of a ballot issue. That protection covers the owner’s own property and — unusually — common areas in which an owner owns an undivided interest.
The association keeps real power over the details: it may limit the size of signs, and regulate the location of placement and the time period during which signs may be displayed. What it cannot do is prohibit. Any ordinance, covenant or contract term to the contrary is contrary to the public policy of this state, and a court may not enforce it.
A homeowners’ association must receive permission from the owner before an agent of the association may enter the property. When seeking it, the association must seek a date and time convenient to the owner and specify what part of the property the agent wants to access. The owner may require that the owner or the owner’s agent be present during the visit.
Three limits sit in the same section. It does not affect the implied licence any member of the public has to use areas generally open to the public — sidewalks, the front path, the front door. It does not apply to condominiums where common elements must be reached through the unit and the declaration or bylaws set the terms of access. And it does not apply to easements of record that specifically benefit the association.
Two 2021 sections, both inside the corporations code. § 35-2-525 lets a homeowners’ association or an association of unit owners meet by remote means — telephone audio, teleconference or videoconference — unless the articles or bylaws provide otherwise. § 35-2-550 does the same for an unincorporated homeowners’ association, subject to its bylaws or other governing documents.
§ 35-2-550 is worth noticing for a second reason: it is the only section in the nonprofit corporations chapter that reaches an association which never incorporated. It is not the only Montana law that does — §§ 70-1-522, 70-16-110 and 70-17-901 all define the association by what it governs rather than by whether it filed articles. Whether Montana has a general unincorporated-association statute is outside the nineteen chapters held for this tab. The two definitions differ where it matters: § 35-2-525’s association must be a corporation organized under Title 35, chapter 2, while § 35-2-550’s must be an unincorporated entity. Both otherwise describe an entity responsible for the operation of a community or a mobile home subdivision, with voting membership of parcel owners, membership mandatory as a condition of ownership, and power to impose assessments that if unpaid may become a lien.
New in 2025. Once a final subdivision plat has been filed with the county clerk and recorder, a homeowners’ association may petition the governing body to transfer title to it of any open spaces, parks or similar common-use areas set aside in the plat — provided the association is organized in accordance with the covenants, the covenants require it to maintain, repair or insure those areas, the governing body finds that was the subdivider’s intent, and the property is not owned by a person. It is the answer to a common and awkward situation: an association responsible for maintaining common ground it does not own.
Under the subdivision chapter, all covenants are considered to run with the land, whether they are marked or noted on the subdivision plat or contained in a separate instrument recorded with the plat. That is one mechanism by which a declaration written by a developer decades ago still binds today’s owner — the general one being § 70-17-203 on the covenants page — and, with no HOA act in Montana, the recorded declaration is the main thing that does.
These come up constantly in association disputes. In Montana they don’t work the way people assume — but the right people are reaching for usually exists under a different law.
Montana has no act comparable to its condominium statute for non-condominium associations — no chapter setting general governance rules, assessment procedures or election requirements. Of the Title 70 chapters held for this tab — property in general (ch. 1), estates (ch. 15), rights incidental to ownership (ch. 16), servitudes and covenants (ch. 17), recording (ch. 21), the Unit Ownership Act (ch. 23) and mobile home lot rental (ch. 33) — none is a planned-community act. The nearest thing to HOA-specific ground in Title 70 is part 9 of chapter 17 — a single section, § 70-17-901. No chapter sets general governance, assessment or election rules.
What an owner has instead is the recorded declaration, the covenant limits in Title 70, chapter 17, and the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act if the association is incorporated.
Montana has exactly one condominium statute, so there is no “which act applies” question of the kind other states have — but there is a harder one. The Unit Ownership Act governs a property only once its owners have executed, acknowledged and recorded a declaration submitting it to the chapter. Looking like a condominium is not enough, and the same is true of townhomes and townhouses under § 70-23-103(2). The county records settle it.
Montana’s open-government statutes are not among the chapters held for this tab, and none of the nineteen that are gives a member a public-records-style right against an HOA. The right people are reaching for is a corporate one: under the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act a member may inspect and copy the core corporate records listed in § 35-2-906(5) — articles, bylaws, three years of member minutes and financial statements, the current officer and director list — on at least 5 business days’ written notice (§ 35-2-907(1)). Board minutes are not on that list. They, the accounting records and the membership list are a step harder: § 35-2-907(3) requires a demand made in good faith for a proper purpose, described with reasonable particularity and directly connected to it, and the association may charge reasonable copying costs (§ 35-2-908(3)). In a condominium, § 70-23-606 gives unit owners access to the common-element receipts and expenditures, and the vouchers, at the manager’s place of business on weekdays.
Montana recognises solar easements — a written, recorded instrument by which one owner acquires a right to unobstructed exposure from a neighbour — and § 70-17-302 sets out what that writing must contain. That is a way to acquire a right by agreement. It is not a statute voiding a covenant that bans solar panels, and none of the chapters held for this tab contains one. Compare § 70-1-522, which overrides a covenant outright for political signs, and § 70-17-216, which declares family and group day care to be a residential use notwithstanding a covenant — when the Montana legislature wants to reach into a covenant, it says so.
Montana’s lien chapter carries construction liens, agricultural liens, tax liens and much else — but no general homeowners’-association assessment lien. The only association lien in the statutes held here is the condominium one at § 70-23-607, and even that is not automatic: it arises only when the association records a verified claim, and it ranks behind tax and assessment liens and behind a first mortgage or trust indenture of record. A non-condominium association’s power to lien your lot, if it has one, comes from the recorded declaration rather than from a statute.
Montana’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act declares unfair or deceptive acts in trade or commerce unlawful (§ 30-14-103) and gives a consumer who suffers an ascertainable loss an individual action — expressly not a class action — for the greater of that loss or $500, with discretion to treble the damages where actual damages do not exceed $100,000, and no punitive damages. One carve-out, in the same section: a consumer may not bring that action while bringing one against a construction professional under the residential-construction sections named there, which are outside the chapters held for this tab (§ 30-14-133(1)(b)).
What the chapters held here do not contain is a Montana analogue of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act governing how a collector may pursue an association debt. The phrase “debt collector” appears once in these chapters, and then only to exclude debt collectors from the Consumer Debt Management Services Act. For collection conduct, federal law does the work.
General information, not legal advice. Statutory text throughout this tab is reproduced from the Montana Code Annotated, 2025 edition, and may not reflect the most recent amendments. The absence statements on this page were tested by full-text search against the nineteen chapters of the MCA held for this tab — nineteen of Montana’s roughly 460 — not against the whole code.